It is reported that business leaders will gather in Melbourne today to officially sign a record export deal that heralds a new future for Victoria’s vast brown coal reserves.
A senior Vietnamese trade delegation, led by Vietnam’s Minister for Planning and Investment Mr Vo Hong Phuc, will join Australia’s Federal Minister for Trade Mr Simon Crean to officially acknowledge the multi million dollar brown coal deal, between Melbourne technology company Environmental Clean Technologies and Vietnam’s TinCom.
The deal enables Environmental Clean Technologies, through its joint venture company Victoria Coldry Pty Ltd, to export 2 million tonnes a year of dry brown coal from early 2014, expanding up to 20 million tonnes a year in its first decade of operations.
The agreement signals the first commercial deployment of ECT’s revolutionary brown coal dewatering technology, known as COLDRY, proposed for development at Gippsland’s Loy Yang Power site.
This patented process enables brown coal to be economically dewatered from 60% down to 12% moisture producing an exportable, black coal equivalent pellet.
ECT and TinCom have established a Joint Venture Company, Victoria Coldry Pty Ltd, to steer the project. VCPL is owned by the project partners - Thang Long Joint Investment Stock Company (Tincom) of Vietnam, and ASX listed technology development company Environmental Clean Technologies (ECT).
Until now, brown coal has been unsuitable for export as it has been too waterlogged and prone to spontaneous combustion, making it expensive and dangerous to transport compared to black coal.
Coldry is a process of dewatering brown coal to create black coal equivalent pellets. The plant will expand progressively over ten years to produce 20 million tonnes of Coldry pellets per annum by 2020. When applied to lignite and some sub-bituminous coals, the mechanically simple Coldry process produces a black coal equivalent in the form of pellets that are stable, easily stored, can be transported and which can be of equal or better energy value than many black coals, whilst significantly reducing CO2 emissions.
TinCom is an investment and commercial company based in Vietnam with interests in real estate development, trading, fund management, manufacturing, construction, brewing and pharmaceutical industries. It plans to build its Victoria Coldry Pty Ltd business by promoting the use of Coldry black coal equivalent pellets to Vietnamese power stations, as well as seeking opportunities to supply the energy needs of China and other emerging nations.
Environmental Clean Technologies is a Melbourne based technology company which has developed a revolutionary technique for drying brown coal to create Coldry pellets.
